Recap: MarketMix 2012 conference

Last week, Amy Rainey and I went on behalf of Banyan Branch to the day-long MarketMix conference on “Thriving in the Conversation Economy.” This event is the largest annual gathering of marketers in the Pacific Northwest. We got to hear marketing strategy from speakers like Ben Huh, CEO and founder of Cheezburger and Ted Rubin, chief social marketing strategist at Collective Bias.

Here are some of my major takeaways from the conference:

“CEOs talk ROI but decide budgets on a feeling. Social media is about feeling.” – Ted Rubinof Collective Bias

It’s easy to get focused on daily tasks and forget about the bigger picture. At Banyan, we have our eyes on developing social trends, influencers and social buzz for our clients every day. This information represents a constant opportunity to get the right feeling across. Save those supporting facts and great shout outs and be sharing them whenever possible with your clients.

Clients want to see ROI and agencies should make this a goal. However, if marketers focus on sales but overlook engagement and loyalty as metrics of success, they miss the long term effects of developing repeat customers. Relationships are the currency that keeps paying off.

“80% of people watching TV are mobile multi-tasking: e-mail, text, talk, or social networking. 15% are using phones the entire time they are watching TV.”- TV break-out session

Social TV is here to stay. Marketers in the entertainment field need to engage with viewers on multiple platforms, or someone else will. With tools like TV Everywhere popping up, marketers are expanding beyond household information. Today we are learning about individual users, right down to who is using what kind of content on what kind of devices.

“57% of companies have acquired customers through a blog.” – Andy Boyer of Relaborate

Some clients aren’t yet willing to give a blog the attention it needs to thrive and support ROI. Marketers have a responsibility to prove blogs’ value and to offer a content development strategy. Success requires a collaborative approach. Developing Q&A templates can help to extract key insights from thought leaders within a company which a content manager can then craft into a SEO-optimized post.

“Make sure you have your social properties and social campaigns on clients’ email unsubscribe page.” – Laura Ashley of TailoredMail

View client email unsubscribes as an opportunity to connect in a different way with customers. Just because a customer doesn’t want to receive brand emails doesn’t mean they don’t want to continue the relationship. Highlight social campaigns, contests, or giveaways – more often than not, the customer will forget to push the unsubscribe button at all!

“The Internet has created more drive for people to connect IRL, not less. Like at conferences, like this one.” – Ben Huh of Cheezburger

Never lose sight of the user experience. Social succeeds where it facilitates connection, relationships, and experiences. There’s nothing like a campaign with an in-person element to drive online buzz.